Editor’s Note
of dreck, but what’s great is sublime,
and plentiful. So much so that
the screenwriter John Gatins likes
to joke that he’s binging Knife’s
Edge or The Poconos to see if peo-
ple believe him. He invents shows to
make the point that there’s way
too much good stuff to keep track of.
The TV expertly curated in this
issue is “peak,” Florence in the
Renaissance, the Main Event. It’s
where the hottest talent wants
to be (see our IT List on page 36).
The women on our cover—two of the
biggest stars of any generation,
doing some of their best work on
Apple TV+ on The Morning Show—
are part of a tectonic shift.
“Television” has burst out of its box,
becoming storytelling undammed.
The medium is evolving at such
a dizzying pace—broadcast, cable,
streaming, quick bite—that it can
be hard to describe it, let alone keep
track of menu options on your
screen. Fear not, we’re from pop cul-
ture HQ, and we’re here to help.
I wouldn’t trade this era for any
other. But every so often, I do yearn
for the days when TV was our
sketchy little hearth, connecting us
to a few things, all at the exact same
time. (Missed it? Wait for summer
reruns.) There’s a story Tina Fey tells
that makes my heart clench, about
being a kid on Saturday nights, sip-
ping cream soda out of a champagne
glass and wearing her mom’s caf-
tan so she could pretend she was on
the lido deck when The Love Boat
aired. Yeah, it was dumb, but it was
magic: all of us lonely kids, glued
to the box. It held us close, linked us
together, and in its lovable, tacky
way, made us a bit more whole.
EVERY TV ADDICT HAS A LOVE STORY.
Here’s part of mine. TV, when I was
wee, was not a “distribution
platform,” but an actual box, which
adults banished to its proscribed
space, where it could be watched
after dinner. The box brought
you the family hour, the buddy-cop
hour, and the Nolan Miller hour,
when heiresses fell down staircases
to induce miscarriage.
Most everybody believed the box
turned kids into idiots.
So, naturally, I fell hard for TV.
Not for the sliver of it that passed
muster with my parents (Master-
piece Theatre), but for the loud, jiggly,
brought-to-you-by-Aaron-Spelling
kind. It seduced me, surely as it did
Heather O’Rourke in Poltergeist, and
swept me off to corrupting places.
Now all that seems quaint.
Sophisticated adults today (let’s
start with you) love TV, the way
my folks loved Charles Mingus and
Vantage 100s. Yes, there’s still loads
A New Golden Age
BY → JD HEYMAN @JDHEYMAN
FOLLOW US ON: @EntertainmentWeekly @EntertainmentWeekly @EW @EWSnaps
JD HEYMAN
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comes from
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away—but his
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is available
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EW ● COM OCTOBER 2019 7
HEYMAN: PHOTOGRAPH BY BEAU GREALY
